MCP Fundamentals 🧱
Intro
👨‍💼 Hello, my name is Peter the Product Manager. I'm here to help you get
oriented and to give you your assignments for the workshop!
Welcome to MCP Fundamentals! In this workshop, you'll dive into the world of
the
Model Context Protocol (MCP)—an
open protocol designed to seamlessly connect AI models with external data
sources and tools. Think of MCP as the "USB-C port" for AI applications: it
standardizes how LLMs (Large Language Models) access context, resources, and
capabilities from a wide variety of sources.
Throughout this workshop, you'll learn:
- The core architecture of MCP: hosts, clients, and servers (see architecture)
- How JSON-RPC powers communication and stateful sessions between components
- How to expose resources, prompts, and tools to LLMs using MCP
We'll focus on the fundamentals—no authentication or authorization required for
our exercises—so you can get hands-on experience with the protocol's most
important features.
We'll be using the
MCP TypeScript SDK
to build our MCP server and the
MCP Inspector to test it.
If you're curious about the details, I highly recommend checking out the
official MCP specification
and the introduction. These
resources provide a deep dive into the protocol, its design principles, and
practical implementation tips.
Ready to connect your AI to the world? Let's get started!